The Compromised Church by John Armstrong, Editor

A few years back Armstrong edited an excellent book entitled, The Coming Evangelical Crisis in which a number of Christian leaders contributed. This is a sequel to that volume, also containing chapters written by a dozen or more evangelicals. But, like many sequels, The Compromised Church simply did not live up to its predecessor. This is not to say that certain articles were not of value, some were excellent, but on the whole it was rather flat at best, and disturbing at times.

In the way of highlights one may read David Wells’ introduction. Wells is always worth reading, although even he admitted that he has already said about all he can say on this subject in his own books. There were also excellent chapters on corporate worship (3), baptism (7), church discipline (8) and mysticism (11).

Armstrong’s own chapter (13) on the calling to ministry I felt was quite weak. And there were disturbing chapters on the Lord’s Supper (6), and frequent reference throughout the book that led me to believe that some of these authors are beginning to cozy up to the Roman Catholic Church, even though Donald Whitney (chapter 11) clearly sounded the alarm against this trend.